Little Lies..

I’m always telling Theo not to tell lies, to my knowledge he has never lied to me (either he’s REALLY good at it or he hasn’t figured out how yet). Mr M and I were discussing what to do if he ever tells a lie, we’re planning on going down the ‘we’ll be crosser at the fact you lied that what you did’ route and hoping that the thing he’s done ISN’T worse than the lie!

I stopped to think… what about the lies that I tell him on almost a daily basis?!
Here is a selection –

‘If you don’t finish this smoothie you won’t grow’ – slight exaggeration there from me.

‘If you won’t have your hair cut I’ll have to wash it every day’ – he hates having his hair washed so this is kind of a threat AND a lie.

‘If you don’t go to sleep there is no nursery for you tomorrow’ – clearly he’s going, nursery is expensive!

‘If you don’t hold my hand someone could steal you away’ – This I actually believe and it scares me to death!

I lie to him all the flipping time!
I do feel however that there’s a difference in lies and in ‘stories’. I grew up in a house of the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny and of course Santa. We were REALLY into Santa. I already do this with Theo as well as ‘Elf on the shelf’ although our Elf is just for the laugh and it not a Santa spy. My dad told me growing up that a haggis was a little creature who lived in Scotland and had one set of legs longer than the other for running around the side of the mountains… I believed this until I was about 13! My Grandad was also a great ‘story’ teller. Fairies on mountain walks, buried treasure in the garden.. It all made for a magical childhood and even though these were ‘lies’ I wouldn’t change it.

So I started to think about the times that I lie to Theo, is it to make things better, tell a ‘story’? Or is it to make my own life easier, to get him to do what I want him to do? On these occasions, how I could change my wording, save the lies for the ‘stories’ and tell the ‘truth’ in the day to day? I tried things like –

‘Mummy would really like you to…’

‘It would make mummy happy if you…’

‘You might feel better if you…’

The results were exactly the same as when I told a lie. At the end of the day, I am asking him to do these things for his safety, comfort, happiness and they are all in his best interests. I have no idea why I was fibbing away when the truth worked just the same. Now I feel like he’s not only doing what I ask but for the right reasons too and I can save the lies for the good stuff – like the hole outside my parents that was caused when the star fell down and Granda and I had to shoot it back up with a catapult.